Formula One: out of order

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Those who dislike team orders misunderstand the sport. Formula 1 is NOT a competition to determine who is the fastest driver, just as football is not a competition to see which player can score the most goals. It is a TEAM sport. F1 is about building the fastest cars, and hiring the best drivers is a consequence of trying to get the cars around the track as quickly as possible. It is, at it's very heart, a team sport. Say a world class footballer takes matters into his own hands (feet?), trying to increase his own goal count, and as a result costs his club a championship. Would there be any backlash? Absolutely! The team comes before the individual. In F1 the drivers championship doesn't even pay any prize money. It's only the constructors championship that matters. The driver's is nice prize to place on a trophy shelf, but it doesn't matter any more than a "golden boot" award in a football tourney. Vettel and Webber have crashed into each other before in very similar circumstances, which is a disaster for the team. Red Bull was trying to prevent that from happening again, and while disobeying Vettel nearly took himself and Webber out AGAIN. Personally, I could not have cared less about the drivers for the first ten years or so that I was an F1 fan. The only interest I had in them was who could help my favorite constructor score points. Currently there is only one driver I care about, and when he retires I will likely go back to not caring again. Drivers come and go, but Ferrari is forever! Summary: team orders are just as critical to Formula 1 as a coach's orders are to any other sport. May they never be banned again!

The only thing you can do is ban 'live' team orders. If this happens, team managers will set the rules before the race with their pilots: do not overtake X if you are behind him in the last 10 rounds or so etching like that. Sure a pilot can disobey but there are not that many pilots who have the credentials to disobey and be certain they will still be in F 1 the following year. There are always been a n1 and n2 pilot in F1, with very few exceptions, and unfortunately I don't see that changing.

When I hold the Cheque book, I make the rules...... and people who don't like should make sure the wood in the whole doesn't hit them in the arse on the way out. This is a simple truth, Formula one is a commercial business, run by a guy who sees it a a way to make millions a year in Sponsorships, advertising and tv rights. this is a contrived and cut throat spot........ exactly how REAL F1 fans like it!!!!!! as Mat states, "Team orders are part of the sport", the results are created by the team, for the team, the drivers form part of that team. if i had been in Horners shoes I would have shown Webber a payslip, taken the time to ensure he understood where his money came from..... and then told him to "pull his head in!" To say that team order are dishonest show a real lack of understanding of F1 if you want "warm and Fuzzy" take up knitting!! W

Red Bull had a 1-2 in the bag. From its perspective it was not going to reduce its chances to favour one driver. The Webber vs Vettel stuff is absolute garbage. The team puts two equal cars out and is at pains to do it after some internal carrying on in the last couple of years - some of which has been very childish (and did not have a German accent). If there is a development part Vettel gets it. That makes sense. Vettel is a 3 times champion of the world so of course the team will looking to maximise its chances of a return. To suggest anything untoward at Red Bull would simply be incorrect. There is too much money at stake - tens of millions of dollars - for any team to mess about trying to rig results for one driver over another. Formula One is worth about $1.5billion per annum. Of that the teams get around 60%, so about $900million. $450million of that is awarded in equal measure to teams which have finished in the top 10 for two years out of three. The other $450million is divided by 44 and then paid to the teams based on their finishing order while another $10m is paid to any teams outside the top 10. Therefore even dropping a single position in the championship standings can cost millions. Ask yourself; is favouring Vettel over Webber worth say $50million a year?

Completely agree. A team should work out a race strategy before hand based on all possible variables a race may throw at them. They shouldn't be able to get in a drivers ear to warn them about oncoming weather or the speed of other drivers and particuarly not for team orders. The pit board is sufficient.

You have to remember that the team engineered the win in part for Vettel. They gave him the undercut at the pit stop which ended up evaporating Webber's 4 second lead as he had older tyres than Vettel and was supposed to pit before him. Without the teams help he would not have been near Webber. It's a farce, and Vettel and certain team personel are dirty cheating scoundrels. This is no conspiracy theory it is completely obvious and transparent favouritism.

Team orders are and always have been (apart from a few years in the middle there) part of the sport. Fangio benefited from them, Alan Jones had them written in to his contract as did Mario Andretti. The key factor here, and it's something Christian Horner said in Malaysia, is that the ambitions of the driver are not always in line with those of the team. The team wants maximum points as it helps them in the constructors championship (which helps their budget two years next). The driver wants to win. Seb doesn't give a damn about the spectators, he wants to win. To dress it up any other way is to draw a long bow. Ultimately Formula One is a team sport. Team orders have a place and a very legitimate reason for being employed. So long as it's not done in the manner of Austria 2002 it's a non-issue.

Best way to remove team orders is to remove the team radio. Drivers can look at their pit board once a lap.